Reference/LiquidCulture/Recipes/ClemGrows

Written by MDot (ClemGrows), a former league admin, and shared here with his permission. Lightly edited for the wiki.

The original recipe card from ClemGrows

The recipe

Ingredient	Amount	Notes
Distilled water, hot	300 ml
Peptone	¼ tsp	Nutritional yeast works as a substitute
Karo light corn syrup	1 tsp
Light malt extract (LME)	1/64 tsp	A tiny amount. Novelty measuring-spoon sets label this size "drop."

Pressure cook 30 minutes at 15 psi. At Front Range elevations, see the warning below about cooking longer.

Why this recipe

Ok y'all, here's my lecture for the day. I'm sure most of you have heard me nerd out about liquid culture: how important I think it is to be dialed in, how much work went into getting this recipe where it is, and why I think it's as good as it gets.

The recipes on the internet will work, but if you're going to make LC, why not do it great? The problem with almost all of them is too much nutrient. You don't need that. You actually don't want it. All it does is make your culture lazy and slow; it overgrows the surface of the liquid and quickly turns into an unusable blob. It does not make the jar colonize any faster.

It stops itself

This recipe has exactly enough nutrients. It colonizes fast and thick, but once the jar is almost full, instead of eating and growing and eating, it basically runs out of food. Not completely, but enough to put the brakes on. In the pictures you can see it colonize beautifully right up until it's about to reach the surface, then stop.

That keeps your LC hungry, aggressive, and ready for grain, and it keeps the quality much higher. If you've ever left an LC unstirred for a while, you know how fast it gets ugly. This one still needs stirring, but about a quarter as often as typical recipes. Once LC forms a big blob on top it's hard to break up, and even when you do, you can see in the syringe that the mycelium looks different. It's also very hard to draw up a needle.

Clear, not cloudy

Getting the ratios right is also how you get perfectly clear LC: no haze, zero sediment. If you've received syringes from me, you know how full they get without going high-nutrient. And it takes off on grain almost immediately.

It's an art

Same as agar, the smallest changes make a massive difference. This recipe sits right at the peak, so adding even a tiny bit too much of anything starts it sliding downhill:

• 1/32 tsp too much LME: hazy, with sediment
• 1/8 tsp too much peptone: amber and hazy
• ¼ tsp too much Karo: it caramelizes hard
• 5 minutes too long in the pressure cooker: it caramelizes

There are ways to add a tiny bit more of each, but it's difficult to get right. The measurements matter.

I'm all about the "Pursuit of Perfection," so I wanted to give a full breakdown of LC, why I think it matters, and how to get it right. If you're going to make LC, make the best LC you can.

Notes for high altitude

Added by the wiki editors.

Because this recipe caramelizes with just a few extra minutes of cooking, it's a good one to watch at altitude. Sea-level guides say 30 minutes, but a 15 psi weight at 6,000 ft runs cooler (see pressure cooking at altitude). Two approaches:

• If your cooker has a dial gauge, run it at about 18 psi for 30 minutes.
• With a fixed 15 psi weight, try 40–45 minutes and check the color. Crystal clear means it's right; amber means back the time off.

For more on jars, inoculation, and stirring, see making and using LC.